Would you like to profit from your passion and live the life you deserve?

The New Year is coming. A bit like me, I'm sure that you have big plans. You may even be thinking that the next 12 months are going to define your future.

This piece is for those of you who want to seriously start their own online business right now and make the next 12 months your most rewarding. I'm going to tell you the steps you need to take to get to launch. It's going to be brief, but there's more than enough here for you to start taking major steps forward.

But the first thing to address, is to truly understand why you want to be your own boss.

Everyone I work with has their own reasons for why they want to create a profitable lifestyle business.

Those reasons can vary greatly, but are always around these common themes:

They want a better lifestyle for themselves and their family.

They want financial security for the long-term.

They want more control over how their life is structured.

They want to be their own boss.

They want to manage their own time.

Each of those reasons is completely valid. But by far the biggest reason people give is to have more money. Of course, having more money should allow you to achieve all of those major reasons for starting your own business I just listed.

The thing is though, you can make your reasons much simpler and give yourself a clearer goal through narrowing the reasons down to just one.

That one reason is that you want more money so that you can achieve freedom.

Whatever the exact reasons you have going round in your mind, that is what you are trying to achieve.

Freedom.

From Right Now you Have To Take Full Responsibility

Anyone can sit there and dream about having their own business, that delivers them freedom in their lives.

But this is only going to happen if you take full responsibility for starting it and running it. You can't just take responsibility for its success.

This means that you have to start by stopping to make excuses right now. Saying you don't have time, don't have money, don't have this, don't have that, it must all stop now.

Many people I have helped work for 50 hours a week in a job, they have a partner and children. They have an extended family and friends. They have hobbies.

So making excuses is counter-productive and the only person you truly fool is yourself. You are quite simply not taking responsibility.

If you are seriously telling yourself that you cannot spend even half an hour day developing a business idea, networking, putting plans in place and developing your knowledge and skills, then you are really never going to make it.

Forget The Idea Of A Perfect idea

When it comes to developing the idea that will be your business, you have to first realise that no idea is ever going to be perfect.

And any idea you have will develop and evolve over time. Nearly every business that has ever started looks very different five years later.

When you develop your idea, it's always good to also try and build in conscious development points.

These extra ideas will allow you to develop a far longer term vision for your business success.

To explain that more fully, you will initially come up with a core product or service that you will start your new business with. But you should also try and come up with an initial idea that can be developed in several directions as time, goals or circumstances dictate.

The sideline benefit of doing this is that if your initial product or service bombs, you have strategies available to try and rescue things, rather than casting around for ideas as you panic.

But what is more important than anything else is that whatever you choose, you believe in it and want to invest your time and effort in becoming an expert in it, and have confidence that it is an idea that can develop in different ways.

Your Idea Is The Key To Everything

I'm not lying when I tell you that the hardest part setting up an online business is coming up with the initial idea. It's harder to nail down than any of the other bits you will have to deal with.

The reason for this is you will never achieve anything if you don't believe in what you are doing.

It is important to understand that choosing your idea is a truly defining moment. At that point you go from being someone dreaming about freedom in their lives, to somebody who is committed to achieving it.

The first step to finding your idea is to brainstorm. This means thinking about your passion and interest, your skills and websites you regularly use. It means looking at services and products all around you.

The idea does not have to be unique. Far from it. But it does have to address a very specific need.

This means looking for gaps within a niche and building your business model to address that gap.

For example:

Can you make an existing product or service better?

Can you segment an existing product or service to appeal to a more defined demographic?

Can you make an existing product or service more user-friendly?

Can you make a premium version of an existing product service?

Can you localise an existing product or service?

These are just some of the questions you can ask yourself to help you better define the ideas you are coming up with.

There really are no unique ideas out there any more. But you can position your product or service uniquely within a niche.

Research The Potential In Your Idea

Once you brainstorm, over a period of days and weeks refine your idea by researching it and putting flesh on the bones.

Once you come up with a really strong plan of how your idea would translate into a living, breathing business, it's time to do some research on how much potential your idea has. It's time to put it out in the wild and see how viable it really is.

There are several quick and easy ways you can get great feedback from potential customers, start the process of building a mailing list and test the viability of your idea all in one go.

I would recommend you do all of these things to come up with a really detailed picture.

First, conduct a survey. You can set one up easily on a site like Surveymonkey. Then spread it on social media and forums that are relevant to what you want to do. If it's a B2B company you want to create then approach relevant companies via email and ask them to complete the survey and offer them a launch incentive for doing so.

Set-up a landing page using something like leadpages.net. Drive some traffic to it through a cheap, short-term pay per click ad campaign, plus social media traffic. This way you can get start to get opt-ins for your mailing list while also finding some early adopters. You can then offer these people an incentive to be early adopters in return for their feedback now.

I would also try and ask some experts. People who are in the industry who could be approachable to you. Try and get some feedback on how they set up their own businesses. If you can't get an expert face-to-face, or on the phone, try networking with some on relevant forums, or on social media. You will be surprised how open people are and how happy they will be to give you advice, so don't think

"Why would they help me, I won't bother....".

All this outsider input put together will give you a invaluable insight into the business you are thinking of creating. Some of the comments you receive may be "showstoppers", but that will stop you making a mistake further down the line.

If you do this step right, you should get great ideas and an idea of how much demand there would be for your product or service.

And yes I know this is not easy. But if you do little bit each day, it's achievable. Having freedom in your life is not easy to do. If it was everyone would do it.

Create Your Online Infrastructure

Another area people struggle with is the setting up of online infrastructure.

I completely understand that you may not have the technical skills to create websites, set-up a lead generation sales funnel, set-up your sales process, plus all the writing and marketing structure that needs to go alongside it.

But that doesn't mean you can't do it, or at least some of it and it doesn't mean you have to pay the earth for others to do it.

Remember earlier I said you should be spending half an hour day doing something, even if you have "no" time. If you have spent the past six months not doing half an hour day, think of how those half an hour sessions learning about how online businesses are structured and researching your own ideas would benefit you right now.

If you had spent half an hour a day working out, you would have an amazing body in 6 months. So spend half an hour a day working out on your business plans.

If you are not technically minded, you are never going to do it all yourself, but all those half-hour sessions would have allowed you to have gained the detailed knowledge of how it all goes together to manage the process. You can then hire individual people to complete it for you.

Yes this means a small investment on your part. But that is the reality is setting up any business. If you want financial freedom, you are going to have to put some time and money where your mouth is.

And if you haven't gained the knowledge you need to manage the process, or you simply don't think you can, then my Automated Business System is a ready-made solution for you. My team will build everything for you and show you how to use it. I will work with you to make sure that everything that is built fits in with your ideas and vision 100%.

But the key point here is that you can do it. Millions of people have, and you are no different to them.

Prepare For Launch

Once you have your product or service in place and your online infrastructure ready to go, the next stage is to actually launch it.

Now obviously you will have done some preparation on this and before launch you will have come up with a full marketing plan. This plan will allow you to hit the ground running on social media and other interactive platforms, pay per click and content marketing.

Again, this is a technical topic that you may not currently have enough knowledge of. But it is exactly the same as for creating infrastructure. Start now and do bite-sized learning, building it up until you can do it yourself.

Online marketing is simply not that difficult. The basics can generate decent traffic and anyone can implement them. So you can do it.

Is Next Year Your Year To Start Living The Life You Deserve?

In a nutshell, that's how you set up a profitable online business. Yes of course it's more complicated than that, more time-consuming and more challenging.

But it's not impossible and if you remove the barriers you build up your mind, you can do it. Just the content of this one piece is enough of a blueprint for you to achieve your dreams - you just have to take action based on the structure and mindset I have laid out right here for you.

And if you really feel you need some help, then I am here to support you through the next year.

My Automated Business System will get your online business built and running smoothly. Through that you will also get access to me for the whole year. Together we will develop your strategy both in terms of products and services, and how you market and develop the business in that first year.